>Has anyone come back from being burnt out to love what they do again? I remember reading a post on HN where a person said they took them close to decade to be

>Has anyone come back from being burnt out to love what they do again? I remember reading a post on HN where a person said they took them close to decade to be close to feel mostly fully functional after a major burnout. I'm sure some people recover faster, but I would agree that it can take even longer. I had a massive burnout about 8 years ago and only now feel like parts of "me" are coming back. My recovery took longer because I had to keep working and I was at the age where I think a lot of people naturally become jaded with corporate structures. So it was a work induced burnout that later overlapped with a natural philosophical crises. First of all, I don't think I'll ever "love" what I do again. At every job I've had after my first few entry level ones, my job responsibilities are ever increasing and a lot of those responsibilities are organizational things I have to do, not stuff I actually enjoy doing. What's there love in that? >If so, how did you manage to do it? 1. Time, Time and more Time. Be patient with yourself. Forgive your own failings and the forgive yourself for not recovering at the speed you feel you should. 2. If you have to keep working, find the right job with the right management with goals you agree with. This can take a few job changes. Changing jobs is tough and that in itself can add to the burnout. I did a few job changes and eventually took a step back career and salary wise, but that was the best decision I made for my long term sanity. 3. Highwaylights already said this, but learn when to care and when to not care. Too much caring = burning out 4. When you are ready, try to find the joy in your personal hobbies without any timeline pressures. There's this Richard Feynman letter or article where he talks about how he felt burned out on Physics and found the joy again by doing physics for fun in his free time, not for work or for publishing another paper. Work on stuff without pressure. Take a year to go through a technical (or non-technical) book/course that would take a month under other circumstances. Finding a tiny bit of joy somewhere is the first step to finding more of it. 5. Realize that you may never fully recover and maybe that is a good thing. Feeling like something permanently broke in you helps with caring less. 6. I feel like I've got some sort form of PTSD against a certain type of manager/management. Certain personalities and keywords really upset me. Finding ways to manage that has helped me a lot as I learned I need to be more confident with setting boundaries. 7. Did I say Time already?